Syracuse, N.Y. — When C.J. Fair left Baltimore and his public high school after three years, he traded the comforts of home for the promise of academic eligibility.

Fair, the Syracuse University basketball senior, remembers the constant chaos in his crowded Baltimore City High School classrooms. He remembers overwhelmed teachers. He recalls the easy excuses to skip school: a missed bus, an exhausting walk or long public transportation commute.

At Brewster Academy, a prep school situated in a New England town of about 6,200 residents, he lived on campus. Televisions were banned from dorm rooms. Internet access cut off at 10 or 11 p.m. Fair had nothing much to do except learn.

"When I was at public school there were just so many kids it was crazy. And there wasn't really one-on-one help. You either get it or you don't," Fair said. "When I went to Brewster, I met with a tutor every other day and she helped me with everything. The classes were much smaller and the teachers were much more engaged. And my grades improved drastically."

Fair, like many major college basketball players, chose to attend a private school to help ensure he would meet the NCAA's academic requirements for freshmen athletes. At Syracuse, he is among like-minded teammates. Of SU's 12 scholarship players, 10 attended private or prep schools.

Syracuse's Class of 2014 recruits Chris McCullough (Brewster Academy) and Kaleb Joseph (Cushing Academy) attend private high schools. SU coach Jim Boeheim said most of the players he and his staff recruit these days are enrolled in private or prep schools.

"The academic bar is being raised. It's going to be raised in the future," Boeheim said. "So I think kids have to get to a prep school where they can get their grades up. That's the main concern. It's good basketball as well, but it's mostly been just about going someplace where you can get your grades up."

The trend toward private schools has been gaining traction with the nation's elite high school basketball talent for years. The NCAA does not track the school classification of incoming athletes, said spokesman Christopher Radford, but anecdotal evidence suggests the growing influence of private education on superior athletes.

Seven of the top 10 players in ESPN's 2013 basketball recruiting class went to private or prep school. Thirteen of the top 25 athletes in 2012 and 2013 spurned public school educations for private school classrooms. At elite college basketball programs like Duke and Florida and Arizona, the majority of the scholarship athletes attended private schools.

"I'd say it's rampant," said basketball coach Gregg Downer of Lower Merion High School, where SU freshman B.J. Johnson attended public school. "With a lot of eighth-graders, that's kind of like free agency of sorts where kids are making decisions and making a list of where they want to go to high school."

Steve Smith, the basketball coach at Oak Hill Academy, said when he started coaching the perennial prep power in 1985, he scheduled 4-6 home games because of the lack of private school teams willing or able to compete with Oak Hill. Now, his team plays 24 home games.

He fields frequent calls from 11-12 year olds who want to play for Oak Hill. Private schools, some of which he's never heard of, call to schedule basketball games. He investigates those schools before he commits to games, he said, because he once scheduled a team of dubious teenaged scholars.

Some of those players, Smith estimated, "were 21-year-old men."

"I've had schools come in here that want to start a program like ours. They ask me how we've done it. The first thing I ask them is 'What kind of school do you have?'" said Smith, who coached former SU star Carmelo Anthony and current SU center Baye Moussa Keita. "All these private schools have cropped up and they're trying to build basketball programs. Some are good schools. Some are developing programs for maybe the wrong reasons."

Brandon Triche and Dajuan Coleman are two of the more recent Syracuse basketball players to come from a public school.Jim Commentucci | The Post-Standard, 2009

News organizations have exposed sham schools that exist to promote athletes, and the NCAA scrutinizes start-up schools that suddenly churn out Division I athletes.

But legitimate private schools offer struggling students tangible proof of academic success. Private and prep schools generally outperform metropolitan public schools in graduating students equipped to handle college course loads. And perhaps more importantly for athletes, they immerse students in an important aspect of NCAA initial eligibility: SAT or ACT prep work.

The NCAA requires that incoming athletes meet qualifying academic standards based on a combination of standardized tests (ACT, SAT) and grade point average. By 2016, those expectations will rise. Students will then be required to achieve a 2.3 GPA (compared to today's 2.0 requirement). Athletes must also complete 10 of their required 16 core courses before the start of their senior years.

It is not coincidental that in ESPN's ranking of its basketball Class of 2016, 16 of the top 25 prospects are already enrolled in private schools.

"That's something that has started to occur and will become more prevalent as the standards get tougher," said Roselle Catholic coach Dave Boff. "Before, you could get poor grades as freshmen or sophomores. But now, there's no longer time to catch up."

Boff, who coached SU freshman Tyler Roberson, said the intimacy and structured environment of private schools helps students learn. As NCAA academic standards tightened over the years, it enabled private schools to lure gifted athletes to their programs while simultaneously boosting their basketball profiles.

That frustrates public school coaches. B.J. Johnson and Dajuan Coleman represent the public school faction of Syracuse's basketball team. Both Lower Merion and Jamesville-Dewitt graduate students at high rates (At J-D, 98 percent of its students graduated in 2012; Lower Merion graduated 98 percent, too). But regardless of the school's academic reputation, private school coaches still attempt to sway elite athletes with promises of higher profile playing opportunities and better scholastic competition.

"Obviously there are some good private schools and good prep schools that are doing things the right way," Downer said. "But having kids that are poached out of your system can be devastating because we can only get kids who live in our area."

Some elite athletes resist that temptation. Others do not.

Johnson said he graduated from Lower Merion with a 3.4 GPA, never felt the need to improve his academic situation and was never approached by private school coaches.

But Coleman and SU forward Rakeem Christmas, both of whom occupied top rungs on the recruiting ladder, said they were approached by various schools hoping to seduce them to transfer.

Coleman said prep school never appealed to him because he wanted a "normal high school experience" and J-D had an excellent academic reputation. Christmas said he never considered attending the Philadelphia public high school within walking distance of his home. His experience in the city's middle schools convinced him of that.

"Private schools, they get you prepared for college. They push you. The public schools, they don't really care. They let you play basketball, do whatever you want," he said. "Even in my middle school, the classes were huge. When I got to my new school (the Academy of the New Church), there was only like eight kids in each class. It was all boys. That just opened my eyes. It made me pay attention in class. You can't slack around because they're going to see you. It made me pay attention."

Christmas transferred to the Academy of the New School as a junior, after two AAU basketball teammates recommended the boarding school. He originally attended Northeast Catholic, but disagreements with the coach there convinced him to transfer, he said.

The cost of private high schools and prep schools often exceeds the means of athletes who might benefit most from the academic immersion. Tuition, room and board at Oak Hill, for example, runs $26,803 per year and does not include all fees. But elite athletes are frequently targeted for financial aid packages to sweeten the enticement.

"There are a lot of tremendous private school opportunities in our area," Downer concedes, "and if someone knocks on your door and says, 'Do you want to go to our school for free?' it has to get your attention."

None of the Syracuse players interviewed for this story regrets going to private school. For Trevor Cooney and Jerami Grant, whose families had established private school traditions, public school education was never an option. But for players like Fair and Christmas, who once attended public schools in large metropolitan areas, private school educations enhanced their chances to play college basketball.

"I wanted to be able to pass my ACT and be able to come in and play," Christmas said. "And the private school helped me do that."

"I'm all for prep school," Fair said. "I mean, I didn't want to leave my (Baltimore) school because I loved it there. But Brewster, it got me ready for college."